


to be alone (with you)

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Domestic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Songfic, Symbolism, dan has a bad day, i think this counts as hurt/comfort, it’s for a hozier song!, kinda lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 07:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20888039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: But you don't know what hell you put me throughTo have someone kiss the skin that crawls from youTo feel your weight in arms I'd never use- Hozier, To Be AloneWritten for phandomficfests’s bingo for the prompts symbolism, philosophy, and song.





	to be alone (with you)

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @iamalwaysclowning :)
> 
> uh  
yeah you can start the fic now

All I've ever done is hide  
From our times when you're near me  
Honey, when you kill the lights and kiss my eyes  
I feel like a person for a moment of my life

——

The world is quiet today, more quiet than what falls within the bounds of normal. No birds outside, no cars honking on the streets below. Not even the swish and the rustle of the wind that never leaves London. It all seems to have vanished, and without it, the world feels a little more 2D, the stranger you talk to once while standing in line. The quietness unnerves, settling into senses until every mental goosebump stands up straight and screaming is the only option left.

Dan hates it.

Not having to listen to cars all the time is nice, sure, and Dan’s never cared much for birds and insects. But the wind, that was a step too far. Dan shivers in the emptiness, feeling strangely exposed without the protection of sound from outside. These things, small noises and light changes, touches of fabric against his skin, the smell of gasoline, keep him grounded, remind him that he exists outside of his own mind. Without them, Dan is lost.

Panic wells in Dan’s chest. His heart beats faster, and he can feel his breathing getting faster too. There’s a slight nausea that comes with it, or will in a moment. Dan knows all the symptoms by now. He’s gone through this a million times before. 

It’s not even panic, this feeling, not anymore. Not now. Dan can’t even tell what it is anymore. He can’t tell what he feels.

But he still says it’s panic, when Phil asks him what’s wrong, when his therapist asks him what happened, when he asks himself why his body acts the way it does. The symptoms are those of a panic attack, and Dan doesn’t have the energy to figure himself out beyond that.

Maybe he doesn’t have the energy to fully panic either. Dan doesn’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. 

He should probably drag himself out of bed soon, before Phil starts worrying and asking questions. Dan doesn’t want to answer questions right now, and he doesn’t want any more people worrying around him. He does enough of that himself.

So he gets up. He pulls himself out of bed, and ignores the tightness in his chest, and the way the silence burns in his head. He ignores the urge to stay in bed and lock the door, because it’ll only make Phil worry, and Phil doesn’t deserve that. Dan hates that this is what he does for Phil, that instead of nice date ideas and handmade gifts he resigns himself to getting out of bed in the morning. Some days he’s fine. Most days, even. Those days, Dan gets up easily. He doesn’t have to force himself to eat. When he smiles at Phil, he’s not faking it at all.

Some call depression a kind of mental sludge, and it’s true that these days Dan feels like he has trudge through mud to get places that he can usually run to, but when Dan wakes up like this, there’s also a bite that comes with every thought in his head, an on-edge feeling that never ends. On these days, every waking moment feels like he’s holding his breath, hoping he doesn’t tip over that edge.

It’s a balance, a terrible one, that mixture of the sludge and the sharpness, the mud to walk through but also the icy wind above it. Dan just wishes his brain could choose one and be done with it. Dan wishes a lot of things.

Today’s an all-black day when it comes to clothes, and Dan is glad he wore a t-shirt to sleep last night. He’ll wear it again today. Phil can’t ask about that, no matter how much he wants to. He does it enough himself. Black jeans, no rips today, and a few brushes to his hair, and Dan’s ready, thanking the heavens for the fact he doesn’t straighten his hair anymore. Dan’s not sure he could’ve managed that.

When he walks into the kitchen, Phil’s there. Of course Phil’s there. Dan sits down at the table, smiles. Tries to smile.

“Hey.”

Phil looks up then, smiling back at Dan, and his is a real smile, too. Dan knows how to tell the difference, and he knows Phil knows too.

Still, he carries on with his forced cheeriness, smiling, talking with that sort of happy lilt that Dan only notices when he’s freaking out about not having it. “Sleep well?”

Sleep well. What an awkward question. It sounds as though they’ve been together for a few months at most, and certainly not ten years. Hands fidget at Dan’s side, eyes blink. It’s interesting how in these moments, it’s the small things you notice. It’s the small things that drive you off course. 

Sitting there, in silence less companionable than uncomfortable, Dan’s eyes dart around quickly, noticing everything and likely misinterpreting all of it. Are Phil’s eyes warm with love, or is he just worried that Dan’s having yet another bad day? Dan can’t tell, but it won’t stop him from trying to analyze it.

The longer Dan looks at Phil’s eyes, the more they just look like pretty colors and less like emotion, and Dan’s sure he seems creepy as hell, coming in here and barely saying anything, then just staring into Phil’s eyes for far too long.

“How are you?” Phil asks, in the voice he only uses when he’s worried about something, and usually when he’s worried about Dan. Dan smiles. It feels fake, stretched out on his face, and Dan’s sure it looks fake too.

“Good.” Dan isn’t looking at Phil’s eyes anymore, but just past them at the cabinet door. It’s slightly open, and for some reason it bothers him far more than it should. “I’m good.”

Phil looks at him with such compassion in his eyes that Dan wants to throw up. Or maybe that’s the nausea, finally coming in to complete the experience. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Dan’s stomach feels like shit, his chest feels like shit, and his mind especially feels like shit. “No.” He stands up, grabbing a piece of bread to make toast even though his body hates him at the very thought, forcing himself to watch anything other than Phil and the way he’s looking at Dan.

“Dan.”

Dan doesn’t turn around, aggressively watching his toast instead. “Phil,” he mocks, even though he knows that’s mean. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to care, anyways. He doesn’t want to feel anything at all.

But instead of getting mad, or even slightly annoyed, Phil just sighs, probably still smiling at Dan in that compassionate way. Dan glares at the toaster. Of course Phil has to deal with him with compassion and grace. Of course he has to be an angel all the fucking time. Just once, Dan wishes Phil would get mad or annoyed or just react at all when Dan does something like this. Just once, he wishes Phil could show some fucking emotion besides happiness.

“Is there anything I can do?” Phil ventures, still acting nice and pleasant and as though Dan hasn’t just purposefully been rude to him, and for some reason, for some fucking reason that Dan himself doesn’t know, that’s what breaks him.

When Dan turns around, Phil’s face brightens, probably thinking that Dan’s finally going to talk to him like a normal, healthy person would. Dan glares at him, ready to yell or gesture angrily or something, but instead Dan bursts out crying.

He’s not sure why. Maybe this mood has frayed his emotions in some way, but Dan’s not usually too much of a crying person. He’s a staring off into space person, a nervous fidgeting person, and sometimes a yelling person, but never crying.

But these are definitely tears rolling down Dan’s face, no matter how much he tries to blink them away. Shit. He has to hide them from Phil.

“I’m fine,” Dan says again gruffly, trying to drown out his crying voice with one of anger. He turns back around to his toast, which has popped in the meantime.

“Dan? Are you crying?” Dan can hear the sound of a chair scraping back, grating on his senses like nails on a chalkboard. He hears Phil standing up, walking towards Dan. He takes a step back, a signal not to come any closer, and Phil stops.

“No.”

“Dan…” Phil sighs again.

Dan shakes his head, trying to wipe all evidence of tears off his face, a difficult feat seeing as he’s still crying. “I’m not fucking crying, Phil. Leave me alone.”

Phil doesn’t come any nearer, but he doesn’t back away much either, and if Dan’s going to take his therapist’s advice once in this whole fucking day, it’s now (though it’s probably not the kind of situation she wanted it to be applied to). He’s going to take this situation into his own goddamned hands. Because that’s what he is, right? Goddamned.

Dan blinks hard in an attempt to make the thought disappear from his head. Isn’t it just great how days like this, arguments like this, make every bad thought he’s ever had spiral up? Yeah, Dan fucking loves it.

Whatever. Dan pushes past Phil on the way out of the kitchen, practically running back to the bedroom. He closes the door, locks it too. Lies down on the bed, closes his eyes, buries his face in his pillow. Tries to make himself relax.

But god, it’s quiet outside.

Time passes. Too much time, and yet not enough, because even though it feels like hours lying in this silence, whenever Dan checks the clock barely anything has passed. Maybe, he thinks, lying all alone on the grey and black comforter, this is his damnation. Stuck alone, with no time and no sound. Dan actually smiles at the thought, almost laughing. 

His sense of humor gets messed up when he spends too much time away from Phil. Too much time, in this context, meaning an hour or two, a pretty sad sounding fact.

Dan rolls over, staring at the ceiling now, counting the barely visible cracks. He really needs to stop thinking about Phil. He just doesn’t want to.

And of course, it’s then, while Dan ponders the implications of that thought, that Phil knocks on the door, polite and precise, breaking the silence that’s been driving Dan mad.

“Dan?” Phil says, soft and kind and a little bit nervous, and Dan’s heart fucking shatters at that one word. “Can I come in?”

Dan’s voice seems almost disembodied when he speaks, an automated message that he’d never remembered to change. “Sure.” It’s bland and cold, and Dan knows Phil can tell that too. He knows, and he winces. Standing up, Dan almost wishes he felt faint.

But he doesn’t, which is, as he reminds himself, a good thing, even though right now he’d rather have an excuse not to walk to the door and be faced with Phil.

He does walk, though, all the eleven steps it takes him to get there. It shouldn’t take eleven steps, or anywhere near eleven steps, but Dan takes his time, walking slowly, walking carefully, walking like he only does when he feels like this.

“Dan?” Phil asks from outside, and Dan hesitates, hand on the lock. “Are you there?”

Dan wants to lie down, forever or at least for a long time. He wants to be silent, to not have to try and explain himself like he’s constantly doing to everyone, for everyone. He wants someone to understand without him having to say.

And Dan also really doesn’t want to be alone.

Not right now, when he’s got nothing to do except cry. Not today, when it’s too quiet outside and he can’t handle any more silence. Not ever, because right now, today, not having someone to just be with sounds like hell.

“I’m here,” Dan says. His voice is choked, almost cracking in the middle of the sentence, and he realizes he’s crying again as he unlocks the door and opens it, showing him Phil, worried, loving, amazing Phil, right there in front of him again.

“I know,” Phil says, smiling, somehow. Phil’s always been talented at smiling in any circumstances. Their whole life is proof of that, isn’t it? “Can I hug you?”

Dan smiles back through his tears. “Of course you can.”

They end up on the bed, not kissing or talking but just holding each other in the room that is slightly less quiet now. Slowly, Dan’s tears dry on his face, and no new ones join them. Slowly, the mindlessness that’s owned him all day starts to fade, and Dan can feel his sense of self return as it leaves, can feel himself in his mind, in his body. He can feel like himself.

And slowly, lying there with his head on Phil’s shoulder, listening to the soft ins and outs of Phil’s breath, the world isn’t so quiet anymore, or at least Dan is no longer alone.

——

There are questions I can't ask  
Now at last the worst is over  
See the way you hold yourself  
Reel against your body's borders  
I know that you hate this place  
Not a trace of me would argue  
Honey, we should run away, oh, someday

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading this, and if you enjoyed it please consider leaving a comment or kudos down below. It means the world to me, so thanks! :)
> 
> come say hi on tumblr @iamalwaysclowning


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